Plains Camp Males

[Xiku_kutsu]

(03-22-2023, 08:20 PM)Mwk85 Wrote: One of them mating with the younger Ximhungwe lioness (Gingerella). Bit of confusion has come to light given that it was believed by some that she was already pregnant. Perhaps she was and lost the litter during pregnancy? Or she just had a full belly in previous sightings? Welcome to the ever changing developments of the Western sector. 

Wow. I know it's been said that lionesses mate with males to distract them from their cubs, or false estrus. But if it's true that these girls haven't been seen denning while obviously not having cubs from previous litters, I'm starting to lean towards another theory I read about that might answer the question about Gingerella maybe losing the litter during pregnancy: the Bruce effect. It's basically where females reabsorb/terminate their pregnancy after encountering new males, and they end up not having to use valuable energy carrying a litter that will more than likely fall to infanticide or even lose their own lives trying to protect their young after giving birth. 

Most of the research is on rodents, though I found this stat on female geladas terminating 80% of pregnancies in the weeks after a dominant male is replaced (https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1213600).  All I could find in lions was this: "quantitative models here and the verbal models that preceded them would predict that the Bruce effect should occur in lions, and indeed demographic evidence indicates that the Bruce effect does occur in lions" (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ar...7219303744). I wish for more concrete evidence on lions though.

This is just a long way of saying the PC males have to get rid of Nkhuma and Tumbela eventually. Maybe these matings will push them to do so. Reply